A novel routing algorithm based-on ant colony in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is made up of mobile nodes that communicate through wireless connections, without any existing infrastructure or central administrator. Topology of the network is not fixed. Hence, routing in dynamic network is a new challenge. Nature-inspired algorithms (swarm intelligence) such as Ant Colony Optimization algorithms have shown to be a good method for expanding routing algorithms for MANETs. Swarm Intelligence (SI) is the local interaction of many simple agents to accede a global goal. SI is based on collective behavior of social insect colonies for solving different types of problems. In this paper, we propose a new routing algorithm for MANETs, which combines the idea of ant colony optimization with zone based hierarchical link state (ZHLS) protocol. The algorithm is based on ants jump from one zone to the next zones which contains of the proactive routing within a zone and reactive routing between the zones. The proposed algorithm will improved the performance of the network such as delay and packet delivery ratio than traditional routing algorithms.